Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific: an Environmental History
Donald S. Garden
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
Call# GF798 G37 2005
From ABC-CLIO:
“A fascinating study of the environmental history of Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day.
Why do kangaroos hop? Or koala bears nap so often? From how animals cope with the extremes of the Australian outback to the tragic impact of early human settlement on Easter Island, this volume provides a scholarly yet accessible survey of the environmental history of one quarter of the world’s surface.
Of interest to students and academics alike, this book provides a much-needed synthesis of the recent literature on the environmental history of Australia and Oceania. Charting the creation of the Australian continent from the ancient land mass of Gondwanaland to the arrival of humans, this book maps out the key trends in the region’s environmental history.
Especially fascinating are the chapters highlighting how successive waves of human migration created environmental havoc throughout the region, leading to the collapse of the Easter Island civilization and the spread of nonindigenous flora and fauna. From the controversies over the reasons why creatures such as the marsupial lion and the giant kangaroo became extinct to such contemporary problems as deforestation and global warming, this book contains sobering lessons for us all.
Series Features
- An A–Z reference section detailing key people, concepts, and events in world environmental history
- A region-by-region focus on how the environment has affected the rise of the world’s great civilizations
Title Features
- A chronology covers key phenomena and events in the region’s environmental history from before the dinosaurs to the present day
- Includes an annotated bibliography detailing the major works on the history of the region’s environment
Highlights
- Provides a detailed survey of the environmental history of the region’s diverse countries, from the Australian land mass to the coral atolls of the Pacific, drawing out common themes applicable to the environmental history of the region as a whole
- Brings together the environmental history of prehistoric, aboriginal, and modern Australia and Oceania in a single volume
- Provides a unique synthesis of recent scholarship on the region’s environmental history”